20 Things You Didn't Know About Bacteria

The oldest lifeforms on the planet still have a few secrets.

By Jocelyn Rice
Oct 23, 2008 12:00 AMMay 16, 2023 4:18 PM
Illustration of the Yersinia pestis "Black Death" bacteria
(Credit: MichaelTaylor/Shutterstock)

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1. At about 5 million trillion trillion strong, bacteria and their cousins, the archaea, vastly outnumber all other life-forms on earth.

2. Lined up end to end, they would stretch some 10 billion light-years — literally from here to the edge of the visible universe.

3. And there are always more on the way. Pseudomonas natriegens, an ocean-dwelling bacterium, can go from birth to reproduction in 10 minutes flat. In five hours a single cell could theoretically give rise to more than 1 billion offspring.

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